Monday 21st December 2015 – After a busy Parliamentary session, I’m looking forward to the festive break. But there are a few things happening first and my office will remain open until Christmas Eve.

Today I’ve organised a visit to Sheffield by Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander to see local health services and meet our NHS staff. We are meeting with the Chair and Chief Executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust and visiting the Hallamshire’s Assisted Conception Unit, meeting the Chief Executive of the Sheffield Children’s Hospital and catching up on their new development, and talking with the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). We will also be meeting junior doctors and talking about the Government’s contract proposals for them, which Labour opposed because they risked putting already overworked staff under more pressure and damaging recruitment and retention of doctors. We’ll be discussing how we can keep pressing the Government to deliver contract proposals which are fair for doctors and safe for patients. The relationship between health and social care is crucial and so we’ll also be meeting with the City Council which manages care provision.

Later in the day I’ll be visiting of the University of Sheffield’s brand new Diamond building, which offers specialist engineering and general teaching and learning spaces for thousands of students, which I ‘topped out’ in January. Then I’ll be catching up with my staff team on constituents’ casework, before the office is closed – from 24th December and then reopening on the 4th January.